WKU News

WKU student Taylor Berzins of Antioch, Tenn., has been awarded a tuition scholarship of $1,000 for Fall 2014 by the Kentucky Association of Mapping Professionals (KAMP).

Berzins will be honored as the KAMP scholarship winner at this year’s Kentucky Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Conference, to be held at the Galt House in Louisville during the third week of September. As the honoree, his conference registration fees will be waived and his accommodations are provided for him at the conference hotel. During the conference luncheon, he will be recognized as the winner of the KAMP scholarship in front of Kentucky’s GIS professionals.

Berzins is a senior majoring in Geographic Information Science (GIScience), is a GIS Intern with the Warren County Stormwater Management team and is president of the first-ever student GIScience club at WKU. He co-founded The Hilltopper GIScience Club last year and the club has received an overwhelming level of support from the GIS community in the region, including Tennessee. Earlier this year, the club’s board members made it possible to connect via Facebook.

Last year was the first year that KAMP began offering a GIS scholarship as a way for GIS professionals in the Commonwealth to give back to a deserving student studying GIS at a higher education institution in Kentucky while majoring in the geosciences. The first scholarship recipient was WKU’s J. Austin Boys, who received a $500 scholarship. This year, KAMP decided to increase the scholarship to $1,000.

“This is the second year in a row that a WKU student has been awarded a KAMP scholarship,” Geography and Geology’s GIS Center Director Kevin Cary said. “We do our best in the department to keep our GIS program competitive region-wide, and Taylor’s KAMP scholarship award validates the importance of WKU’s GIS program both in the Commonwealth and around the region.”

For information about applying for next year’s KAMP’s scholarship, or about GIS, WKU’s GIS programs, and GIS applications in business and industry, contact Kevin Cary in WKU’s Center for GIS at (270) 745-2981 or kevin.cary@wku.edu. Additional information also available at http://www.wku.edu/gis/

Contact: Kevin Cary, (270) 745-2981.